Anne G. Rosenwald

Genomics is an increasingly important part of biology research. However, educating undergraduates in genomics is not yet a standard part of life sciences curricula. We believe this is, in part, due to a lack of standard concepts for the teaching of genomics. To address this deficit, the members of the Genomics Education Alliance created a set of genomics concepts that was then further refined by input from a community of undergraduate educators who engage in genomics instruction. The final genomics concepts list was compared to existing learning frameworks, including the Vision and Change initiative (V&C), as well as ones for genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology, and bioinformatics. Our results demonstrate that the new genomics framework fills a niche not addressed by previous inventories. This new framework should be useful to educators seeking to design stand-alone courses in genomics as well as those seeking to incorporate genomics into existing coursework. Future work will involve designing curriculum and assessments to go along with this genomics learning framework.

Introduction: Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of computational and biological sciences that focuses on the analysis and interpretation of large biological data sets. Although recognized as essential in the life sciences, bioinformatics is not commonly integrated in undergraduate life science education programs. Based on a national survey in 2016, the Network for Integrating Bioinformatics into Life Sciences Education (NIBLSE) published a community-sourced set of core competencies in bioinformatics education. The survey also identified barriers that prevent incorporation of these competencies into the curriculum. In the current study, the NIBLSE group reports the findings of a new survey to 509 life science educators across the US in 2022 to identify current barriers of bioinformatics integration and to determine if the landscape of bioinformatics education has changed since the 2016 survey.Results: Similar to previous results, a majority of respondents who currently teach bioinformatics or plan to teach bioinformatics report barriers. The top two barriers reported are students lacking prerequisite skills/knowledge and instructors lacking time to restructure course content. As in 2016, women reported experiencing barriers to bioinformatics teaching significantly more often than men; faculty from underrepresented minority backgrounds reported barriers more often than non-URM faculty; and educators at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) reported barriers more frequently than colleagues at non-MSIs. For additional insight into the barriers facing these educators, we conducted focus groups which provided qualitative data that supported the survey findings and revealed common themes including faculty perceptions of the relevance of bioinformatics in the curriculum. Despite the perceived value of bioinformatics education, many focus group members cited lack of student preparation and interest, and technological access as barriers. Participants also discussed how professional development and community support would enhance and sustain bioinformatics teaching.Discussion: Taken all together, this study indicates that challenges remain, which vary among faculty types and settings, but that more educators are attempting to integrate bioinformatics into life sciences education. In summary, our results suggest that redoubled efforts to provide training and community support to life sciences faculty is necessary.

The preparation of future scientists, the technical workforce, and informed citizens will require continued transformation to the ways we approach STEM teaching and learning. Undergraduate STEM education is rapidly emerging as a focus of faculty scholarship, but new models for reform need to be developed and tested to accelerate changes in teaching practices. This paper describes a flexible, participant-driven, multi-phase, collaborative approach to developing open educational resources (OERs) that leverages linked communities of practice (CoPs). Equally valuable, our framework for development, adaptation, dissemination, and validation of OERs provides a platform for faculty professional development and sustained support through cooperative mentoring. The three linked CoPs in the framework include incubators for the creation of initial OERs, Faculty Mentoring Networks (FMNs) for the implementation and adaptation of OERs for classroom use, and Education Research Communities to assess the effectiveness of the OERs. The CoPs create numerous benefits for participating faculty, including the ability to collaborate in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through scholarly publication of OERs and their assessment; ongoing mentorship in implementation of OERs in the classroom; and development of educational leadership skills and experience. Thus, the three CoPs synergize with one another to build and sustain capacity through providing vetted, up-to-date educational resources, as well as ongoing training and support for faculty. While we developed this approach for the rapidly changing field of bioinformatics, the linked CoP framework will have utility for STEM education reform more broadly and disciplines beyond STEM.

The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP) engages students in a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). To better understand the student attributes that support success in this CURE, we asked students about their attitudes using previously published scales that measure epistemic beliefs about work and science, interest in science, and grit.

Developing effective assessments of student learning is a challenging task for faculty and even more difficult for those in emerging disciplines that lack readily available resources and standards.

Bioinformatics, a discipline that combines aspects of biology, statistics, mathematics, and computer science, is becoming increasingly important for biological research. However, bioinformatics instruction is not yet generally integrated into undergraduate life sciences curricula. To understand why we studied how bioinformatics is being included in biology education in the US by conducting a nationwide survey of faculty at two- and four-year institutions. The survey asked several open-ended questions that probed barriers to integration, the answers to which were analyzed using a mixed-methods approach. The barrier most frequently reported by the 1,260 respondents was lack of faculty expertise/training, but other deterrents—lack of student interest, overly-full curricula, and lack of student preparation—were also common. Interestingly, the barriers faculty face depended strongly on whether they are members of an underrepresented group and on the Carnegie Classification of their home institution. We were surprised to discover that the cohort of faculty who were awarded their terminal degree most recently reported the most preparation in bioinformatics but teach it at the lowest rate.

Bioinformatics brings together biology, mathematics, statistics, and computer science to analyze biological sequence information. Anyone with a computer, access to the Internet, and basic training in this field can contribute to genomics research. Yet many biology faculty feel they lack training in the use of bioinformatics tools and therefore include little bioinformatics content in their courses. To overcome this challenge, the Genome Solver Project was created to empower undergraduate faculty by offering training and resources for creating hands-on bioinformatics course materials. In this study, we show the results of one survey completed directly after the workshop and a further follow-up survey to gain insight into the impact the workshop had on faculty willingness to include bioinformatics content in their courses and what challenges they still faced. We also measured student performance at five different institutions using a 20-question multiple-choice quiz delivered before and after bioinformatics instruction. Data collected from 640 students at these five schools demonstrated student performance increased, suggesting that bioinformatics training workshops can be an effective means of encouraging faculty to engage in bioinformatics instruction and positively influence student learning.

Although bioinformatics is becoming increasingly central to research in the life sciences, bioinformatics skills and knowledge are not well integrated into undergraduate biology education. This curricular gap prevents biology students from harnessing the full potential of their education, limiting their career opportunities and slowing research innovation. To advance the integration of bioinformatics into life sciences education, a framework of core bioinformatics competencies is needed. To that end, we here report the results of a survey of biology faculty in the United States about teaching bioinformatics to undergraduate life scientists. Responses were received from 1,260 faculty representing institutions in all fifty states with a combined capacity to educate hundreds of thousands of students every year. Results indicate strong, widespread agreement that bioinformatics knowledge and skills are critical for undergraduate life scientists as well as considerable agreement about which skills are necessary. Perceptions of the importance of some skills varied with the respondent’s degree of training, time since degree earned, and/or the Carnegie Classification of the respondent’s institution. To assess which skills are currently being taught, we analyzed syllabi of courses with bioinformatics content submitted by survey respondents. Finally, we used the survey results, the analysis of the syllabi, and our collective research and teaching expertise to develop a set of bioinformatics core competencies for undergraduate biology students. These core competencies are intended to serve as a guide for institutions as they work to integrate bioinformatics into their life sciences curricula.

Bioinformatics, a discipline that combines aspects of biology, statistics, and computer science, is increasingly important for biological research. However, bioinformatics instruction is rarely integrated into life sciences curricula at the undergraduate level. To understand why, the Network for Integrating Bioinformatics into Life Sciences Education (NIBLSE, “nibbles”) recently undertook an extensive survey of life sciences faculty in the United States. The survey responses to open-ended questions about barriers to integration were subjected to keyword analysis. The barrier most frequently reported by the ~1,260 respondents was lack of faculty training. Faculty at associate’s-granting institutions report the least training in bioinformatics and the least integration of bioinformatics into their teaching. Faculty from underrepresented minority groups (URMs) in STEM reported training barriers at a higher rate than others, although the number of URM respondents was small. Interestingly, the cohort of faculty with the most recently awarded PhD degrees reported the most training but were teaching bioinformatics at a lower rate than faculty who earned their degrees in previous decades. Other barriers reported included lack of student interest in bioinformatics; lack of student preparation in mathematics, statistics, and computer science; already overly full curricula; and limited access to resources, including hardware, software, and vetted teaching materials. The results of the survey, the largest to date on bioinformatics education, will guide efforts to further integrate bioinformatics instruction into undergraduate life sciences education.

Bioinformatics is becoming increasingly central to research in the life sciences. However, despite its importance, bioinformatics skills and knowledge are not well integrated in undergraduate biology education. This curricular gap prevents biology students from harnessing the full potential of their education, limiting their career opportunities and slowing genomic research innovation. To advance the integration of bioinformatics into life sciences education, a framework of core bioinformatics competencies is needed. To that end, we here report the results of a survey of life sciences faculty in the United States about teaching bioinformatics to undergraduate life scientists. Responses were received from 1,260 faculty representing institutions in all fifty states with a combined capacity to educate hundreds of thousands of students every year. Results indicate strong, widespread agreement that bioinformatics knowledge and skills are critical for undergraduate life scientists, as well as considerable agreement about which skills are necessary. Perceptions of the importance of some skills varied with the respondent’s degree of training, time since degree earned, and/or the Carnegie classification of the respondent’s institution. To assess which skills are currently being taught, we analyzed syllabi of courses with bioinformatics content submitted by survey respondents. Finally, we used the survey results, the analysis of syllabi, and our collective research and teaching expertise to develop a set of bioinformatics core competencies for undergraduate life sciences students. These core competencies are intended to serve as a guide for institutions as they work to integrate bioinformatics into their life sciences curricula. Significance Statement: Bioinformatics, an interdisciplinary field that uses techniques from computer science and mathematics to store, manage, and analyze biological data, is becoming increasingly central to modern biology research. Given the widespread use of bioinformatics and its impacts on societal problem-solving (e.g., in healthcare, agriculture, and natural resources management), there is a growing need for the integration of bioinformatics competencies into undergraduate life sciences education. Here, we present a set of bioinformatics core competencies for undergraduate life scientists developed using the results of a large national survey and the expertise of our working group of bioinformaticians and educators. We also present results from the survey on the importance of bioinformatics skills and the current state of integration of bioinformatics into biology education.